November 10, 2014

Hands off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America (New York: Center Street, 2014) is Dana Loesch‘s less-than-successful attempt to imitate Ann Coulter‘s snarky style and personal cover photos. Loesch’s book does contain a lot of good information, though some of her anecdotes are repeated. As the book is described on her website, it

is filled with research and detail. In addition to explaining why the Founding Fathers insisted on including the right to bear arms in the Bill of Rights, Loesch argues that “gun control” regulations throughout history have been used to keep minority populations under control. She also contends that current arguments in favor of gun control are primarily based on emotions and fear.

Hands off My Gun might be more readable if Loesch didn’t include unexplained slang (I seem to remember seeing the “word” mansplaining) and cultural references, particularly to musical groups a lot of her readers would never have heard of.

Shapiro’s writing reminds me of Ann Coulter‘s, though his tone is more conversational than I remember hers being.

Reading this book should make you angry enough to try to stop the bullies. As Shapiro concludes, “There is only one way to stop a bully: to punch back. We’ve seen who the bullies are and what they’ve done. Now it’s time to fight them” (263).

June 29, 2014

In Faithless Execution: Building the Political Case for Obama’s Impeachment (New York: Encounter Books, 2014), Andrew McCarthy does precisely what he says in the subtitle. At the end of “Chapter One,” McCarthy states that “The legal case for impeachment is very strong. The political case lags far behind–and it is the only case that matters. Political cases have to be built” (26).

Unfortunately, McCarthy is a lawyer, and based on the vocabulary, he seems to have written his book for other lawyers, which would include a lot of politicians–too many. Faithless Execution is not written for the general reader. However, the interested reader could comprehend the Articles of Impeachment in Part II (96-155), and I would strongly recommend reading at least those pages as a reminder of Obama’s lawlessness (i.e., “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which McCarthy does define in “Chapter Two.”

Despite his claim that “Political cases have to be built” (26), McCarthy fails to explain how the House could garner the necessary public support for impeaching Obama.

March 9, 2014

I’m currently reading Scott Walker‘s book Unintimidated. On page 102, the end of Chapter 12, he wrote this paragraph that has stuck with me:

. . . Fairness is one of the strongest arguments we have in politics. Never, ever, cede it to the other side. People won’t care about the effectiveness of your policies if they are not first convinced that you policies are also morally right. To win any public policy fight, you have to be able to first win the “fairness” debate.

How is it fair to allow people who enter the country illegally and continue breaking the law after they come here to stay in the country and benefit from their crimes at the expense of American citizens and taxpayers? The right is ceding the “‘fairness’ debate” about amnesty to the left.

November 16, 2013

Ann Coulter‘s latest book, Never Trust a Liberal Over Three–Especially a Republican, was a real disappointment. The book consists primarily of her articles, mostly from the last five years though some are older than that. I expected original well-researched and -documented content. If that’s what you expect, too, don’t bother reading the book.